SpaceX fires up Falcon 9 rocket ahead of Polaris Dawn astronaut launch (photos)

SpaceX’s historic Polaris Dawn astronaut mission remains on track to lift off early Tuesday morning (Aug. 27).

Over the weekend, SpaceX briefly ignited the first-stage engines of the Falcon 9 rocket that will launch Polaris Dawn, in a common preflight test known as a static fire.

“Static fire test of Falcon 9 complete — targeting Tuesday, August 27 at 3:38 a.m. ET for launch of the @PolarisProgram’s Polaris Dawn mission,” the company said on X on Sunday (Aug. 25) morning. Later that day, SpaceX shared two photos of the test in another X post.

a black and white spacex rocket test-fires its first-stage engines on the launch pad beneath a dark-blue late-evening or early-morning sky, with a body of water in the background — Another view of the Polaris Dawn static fire. (Image credit: SpaceX)

Polaris Dawn will launch from Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, sending four people into orbit aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. The company will stream the liftoff live.

If all goes according to plan, the Polaris Dawn crew — commander Jared Isaacman, pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and mission specialists Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon — will get farther from Earth than any people have since the Apollo era. Isaacman and Gillis will also perform a spacewalk, the first ever conducted on a private spaceflight.

Isaacman has been to orbit before. He also commanded and funded the groundbreaking Inspiration4 mission, a three-day journey flown by SpaceX in September 2021.

Polaris Dawn is the first of three planned missions in the Polaris Program, a human-spaceflight effort organized and funded by Isaacman. The third mission in the series will be the first-ever crewed flight of SpaceX’s Starship megarocket, if all goes according to plan.